Prue Leith's Favorite (And Least Favorite) Cookies May Surprise You - Exclusive Interview

From running a Michelin-starred restaurant to opening cooking schools in her native South Africa and adopted home England to hosting the "Great British Bake Off," Dame Prue Leith has quite the resume. ("Dame," you say? Yes, Leith has been honored for her contributions to the British Empire — twice.) Recently, Tasting Table sat down with the culinary maven to chat about her new cookbook, "Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom." 

Published October 15, in the new book Leith focuses on simple, yet delicious, recipes and doles out tidbits of wisdom, witty quips, and what she calls "handy hacks" designed to improve your cooking, regardless of your level of experience. Of course, we didn't only discuss her new cookbook. Leith shared some of her top holiday baking tips, pantry staples (you'll want to run to the store when you read them), and the cocktail she feels is the best for any and every occasion.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Do you have any baking tips you want to share with our readers?

This is a bit Christmassy, but my best advice is not to try and make the English Christmas pudding, because most children don't like it. It's solid dried fruit, it's too rich. But [you can] take a little Christmas pudding — or some sweet mincemeat from the jar, mince pies, anything that has all those Christmas spices in — and just mix one-third of that to two-thirds vanilla ice cream (if you buy soft scoop ice cream, it's very easy to get them the two mixtures blended). Pack the mixture into a pudding bowl lined with plastic wrap and freeze it. Then you can turn it out like a Christmas pudding, take the cling film off, stick a bit of holly on the top, and light it with brandy. It is absolutely divine, and children love it.

Is there a specific ice cream brand you're a fan of?

Whatever you like best, I use Carte D'Or. It's a soft scoop vanilla, they make a really good vanilla ice cream with all the little seeds in it.

Americans are understandably a little bit wary of mincemeat pies. Do you have advice for someone who is trying to be more adventurous or going over to the U.K?

Mince pies are absolutely delicious, but I prefer them without too much mincemeat in them, because the meat is itself so rich and so dense. So, I make frangipane and put a good thick layer of that in the bottom of the pastry cup when the pastry is still raw, then a tablespoon of mincemeat on top, it looks like a mince pie but it tastes like a mild mince pie. And everybody loves the frangipane taste.

Do you have any tips for making hot water crust?

There's only one thing you have to worry about with hot water crust, because it's wonderfully easy to handle. It's soft, it bends easily and everything else, but you have to keep going with it because once it gets cold, it gets difficult. So pour the hot water in, mix the that all together, and then use it. Don't then go and have a cup of tea because it will get cool and then it becomes really hard to handle.

I had pistachio frangipane, it was very good, although they added raspberry jam and it totally overpowered the pistachio.

That's too much. Bakewell tart has frangipane and a layer of raspberry jam, but it should be a smooth, thin layer of jam, otherwise, as you say, it kills it.

I had the most delicious — now I've forgotten the name of it. I had it in Central Park, in that bakery ... I think it was Pain Quotidien or one of those mass bakeries. When [bakers] had too much stale brioche, they would spread frangipane all over the top, add baked almonds on top [of that], and then rebake it. Absolutely delicious. Basically, take any stale cake, [add] frangipane on top, and stick it in the oven until the frangipane is softened and melts a little bit.

For any cookie that's cut out — gingerbread, sugar cookie, whatever — do you have tips for helping them hold the shape? 

I think if you're baking biscuits and you're cutting them out with a cookie cutter, the trick is to cut them out when the pastry is really cool. Don't let the pastry get too warm, because the warmer it gets, the softer it gets.

So, cut them out when the pastry is quite stiff and cold, and then they will be stiff enough to lift onto the baking sheets. And then, my tip is refrigerate them for a while before you bake them, because if they're at all warm the butter melts before the flour cooks. That means they spread a bit and they'll get out of shape and lose their definition.

You get those blobby ones.

Yes. So, if they're cold when they go into the oven, the butter doesn't melt so quickly and the flour gets a chance to cook and bind the whole thing together.

What's your favorite frosting for sugar cookies?

I'll tell you a secret. I don't like sugar cookies. And even less with frosting on top. But if I was forced to make them, I would use just royal icing. so you could get it quite thin, because they're already very sweet. Then you put icing or frosting on topand it's even sweeter. So, if you must make sugar cookies, ice them very thinly.

When you're frosting things, do you need an offset spatula or is a butter knife is fine?

I use a palette knife, but it depends on what you're making. If you're doing lots of layers for a wedding cake or something, the first layer you just pour the icing on without worrying too much if it's got bubble in it or anything. It's only with the top one that you have to really get it absolutely smooth. I will quite often use a hot palette knife, it smooths everything nicely.

Do you have a knockout cookie recipe or something like that to bring to a cookie swap?

I really love an American chocolate chip cookie, which is probably the most famous cookie in the world, but we hardly ever get them in London. I love to make them just because nobody does, and my tip for them is to make big ones. If they're nice and big, there's a good chance that you'll pull them from the oven when the outside is crisp and the middle is still nice and squishy.

Do you have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies or tips for doubling one?

I do have a recipe somewhere, but honestly, I don't think it would be very different from anybody else's.

So just maybe larger scoops, lower oven temp, longer cook time?

Yes, in order to get them bigger and better.

What is your favorite drink, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, for the holidays?

I was asked this this morning, and I said very enthusiastically, 'A margarita!' I wouldn't mind one right now.

Do you serve them at parties?

I don't, because they're too much trouble to serve for lots of people. But I do sometimes make them for John and me. I think the secret of a good margarita is that you really need the salt around the edge — the salt is important. They shouldn't be too sweet and they should be fairly large because they go down your throat so fast. That's always unsatisfactory. You need a decent size one in a plastic glass.

Do you give it any little twists?

Always the classic margarita.

The photos in your cookbook are gorgeous, the colors really pop. It's so vibrant.

I'm absolutely thrilled with it. I think it's my 16th cookbook and it's the first time I've been really thrilled with the pictures. Not just the photographs of the food, which are fantastic, but because we did them in my kitchen. We did them by simply following the recipe, cooking the dishes, and plonking them underneath the camera. And we had a very good cameraman who was very good at the lighting. But apart from the lighting, we didn't do any fiddling around. We didn't spray them with water or oil, cheat or redo them. We just did them as they came.

So people could, in theory, actually cook the recipe and that's what it will look like.

That was just exactly what we did. So, I feel quite proud of them. And then, I also liked the pictures of me because they were ... My previous cookbook, I hated every single picture of myself. I did a cookbook with my niece, and neither of us liked the pictures.

You don't get final approval?

Well, we did, but I don't know.

Didn't want to be fussy.

Yes. I just said, 'Get rid of it.' The longer that book was in print, the less I like it. But these are lovely. The pictures are nice and the designers really thought about color.

I love the title, "Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom," and the quote in the introduction. Modern feminism is very much like, women can have it all and do it all ... And then there was a pushback against that concept, like yes, you can have a do it all, but you don't have to and nobody should be really expected to. But I didn't realize it was ... I thought that was a more recent reaction.

It was in the '60s and '70s. Shirley Conran was reacting to the very '50s idea that women had to be perfect, do their makeup before their husbands got home, make sure his slippers were warm by the fire, look after him. And then, [after the '50s] it became, 'you can have it all.'

There was a famous banker, Nicola [Horlick] and she had six children, was the head of a huge bank, and was a fantastic model for 'you can have it all.' But there wasn't much talk about how her husband was home all the time, that she had a lot of help because she had a lot of money. So, Shirley came along and said, 'Look, you can't have it all. And you don't want it all. You don't have to.' And if you do, if you are stressed out and all the rest, her main thing was, you don't have to be a domestic goddess, you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to do everything. 

She used to say lovely things like, 'First things first, next thing's never,' and, 'I can do clean or I can do tidy. Choose.' Just be realistic, be proud of what you do and enjoy it. Stop trying to be everything.

I feel — especially for generations growing up with the internet — there is quite a bit of pressure to not only embrace domesticity, but also, in turn, reject it. Everything's always perfect, and it's online. You're the mom who does everything, but you're also fun and you go out for beers. It's wild that we keep having the same conversations over and over.

Yes, I know, I know. And I'm sure the conversation will go on forever. What I worry about is there's now so many people worrying about their mental health ... And it's partly the internet being driven by ads that say, 'Have you got ADHD? Have you got some new mental problem?' You start looking at the symptoms, and of course you think you've got them all. 'How are your stress levels, how are your ...' So people are constantly worried about everything, what they eat. 

There's a mountain of women living on supplements. Obviously there are supplements for people who are short of something ... But mostly, there's no evidence they do any good, and they cost a lot of money. I would rather have money go to good, fresh food — and the occasional margarita. Let's relax a bit.

That's probably part of the reason too, at least in the U.S, some people have trouble getting good, fresh food. And even if they are able to purchase it, they might not have time to make it.

And they may not have an oven, a campfire, or even a frying pan. And if you aren't educated about food and its importance, why would you ever bother cooking? It costs more money — well, many people think it does.

Our minimum wage is also quite low. And though people say they're starter jobs, many working for minimum wage are adults, a lot of them single parents. It's very hard to get by and keep your family fed. So, in theory, yes, you should be getting everything from the food that you eat, but for some people it's such a struggle.

I don't think I've got a solution to the problem. It worries me that people are making a fortune out of both sides of ... [it's] very often the same multinational companies providing the supplements who are providing the junk food that makes [people] need the supplements.

Your photos have a variety of colors and textures, and a true depth that makes them so appealing visually, in addition to, I'm sure, tasty (although I have not eaten them, obviously). Do you have any go-to ingredients or simple additions that people can use to make food really pop?

There are a couple of things that I use a lot. One is quite difficult to get and I don't know whether it's easier in America: anchovy essence. You can sometimes find anchovy paste, and that's quite good. A little bit of anchovy will jazz up almost anything, or anything with umami flavor. A bit of miso would do it, so that's one thing I use a lot.

And there's this other thing that I learned from chef Tommy Banks that's amazing. He ferments mushrooms and then he dehydrates them. He has a dehydrator, I don't. I'd have put it out in the sun. I don't know if you can put things in an air dryer and turn on the fan and not the heat. I don't think you can.

I don't know, but I've dehydrated apples and things in my oven. Set as low as I could possibly get and just let it go forever.

I expect you could do, with it long enough at the lowest. Anyway, first you ferment the mushrooms, then you dehydrate them completely, and then you grind them up into a powder. I shake it into all sorts of things.

I've also taken to making my own pickles. I usually have cucumber pickles and carrot pickles, because there are lots of dishes just a bit of pickle helps.

Do you do a lacto-ferment or do a quick pickle in the fridge?

A quick pickle. I like a lot of coriander, so with garlic and coriander usually.

Are there any store-bought ingredients you prefer to fresh or think aren't worth the hassle? In the new book you mentioned puff pastry. Obviously, that's the go-to 'don't make it, buy it.' Is there anything else that you feel similarly about?

I don't think guilty about this, because I think it's just as good as I'd make: boxed custard. The Americans aren't as mad about custard as the English are, my husband eats anything if it has custard on it. But you can get liter boxes of made custards. It's already pouring consistency, you just snip off the end and squeeze it on. It's what I will recommend for trifle.

Yeah, we don't really have that. There's pudding cups, but we don't have a proper custard.

In England you can get it at any supermarket in various brands. Everybody makes one: Birdseye, Ambrosia, all the supermarkets have their own brand. They're all slightly different, so you have to find the one you like, but I certainly cheat on that. Or when I'm decorating things. If you made a cold pudding of some sort, like a trifle, my trick for decorating is to just go around the larder and grab anything you can sprinkle.

So, sprinkles, or you can take a grater and make chocolate curls off a bar. You can put — we call them Maltesers, but Whoppers or malt balls — on top of a cake or on top of a pudding, absolutely delicious. And then all the classic things like glace cherries and nuts, just anything on top. If you put in enough variety and different colors, edible flowers, it looks absolutely beautiful. It's so very simple to do, it takes about five minutes. It's fun.

Are there any pantry staples you think someone setting up their kitchen should have?

Obviously, all of the usual, olive oil, onions, and things, but I always have chopped tomatoes in cans. I try to buy the best ones because they're richer and sweeter. Good Italian tomatoes, I don't know what the brand is.

And chopped, not whole?

I buy them chopped because it saves time. You have to mash them to use them, but I sometimes have the whole ones too. And I have Marigold's vegetarian bouillon powder, which I would never be without. Oh, and horseradish, grated.

Do you get it fresh and grate or buy it pre-done?

Both. But I have it fresh in the fridge, it keeps for months. I've had one in there for months and I just grate it, it looks like a fatter carrot.

You just put it in the crisper?

Yes it just lies in the crisper. Maybe bugs don't like it, it doesn't go moldy.

I do always have a jar of Vienna sausages, because in an emergency, there's nothing like a good hot dog.

How do you eat them?

Sometimes I might just add them to a bean stew or something, but I often just give them to my husband in a roll, which [I keep] frozen. They thaw quickly, and you just fry the sausages very fast, get them nice and brown. Heat them up and put the hot dog in a roll with lots of good mustard and he's as happy as Larry.

Like a roll-roll, not like a sausage roll?

A hot dog roll or even a French baguette.

What's your go-to mustard brand?

At the moment, it's Jeremy Clarkson's. He has something called Jeremy's Hot Beer Seed Mustard. Normally I don't like the seedy ones, but this is absolutely delicious. Anyway, normally I would just have a French Dijon mustard, but I do like that one.

Dame Prue Leith's newest cookbook, "Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom: Really Good Food Without the Fuss," is on sale now. You can purchase it here.